One True Love
by Virtuella
Summary: Based on George Eliot's "The Mill on the Floss" - A letter I wish Maggie Tulliver had written to Philip Wakem.


Dearest Philip,

I feel tempted to say you cannot imagine, but I know that you can, how much I wept over your letter, both for your goodness and for my foolish forsaking of you, for my treacherous failing to cherish a mind and soul as pure and superior as yours. Nobody else could fathom my feelings but I know that you, dearest, can.

I shall not begin by asking your forgiveness, because I know that you have already forgiven me in an outpouring of that generous selfless love which lifts you so high above every person I have ever known. And you also know, you must know, how your forgiveness soothes me and how, even if nothing else were to bind me to you, I am not merely filled with gratitude - I am overflowing.

But Philip, dearest, do not resign yourself so swiftly to a life of devoted quiescence. Have not I come back? Have not I turned my back on the one who sought to take me away so fiercely, so urgently? You say you believe in my truthfulness, though you mean only that you believe me to have struggled to keep a promise of which you think I had tired. You mean you trust in my sense of duty. Will you believe me now if I tell you that you are mistaken? It is your own anxiety that makes you fear you have thrust yourself upon me. Truly, you have not. Your affections have always been welcome to me. I told you, back in those happy days when we walked together in the Red Deeps, that I could not imagine loving anyone better than you. I spoke the truth. My love for you has never faltered, not for a single moment, not through all the dazed tremors that took hold of my heart for a while. My failing was that I did not know it for what it was. When we were together, I felt safe and contented and alive; I felt that my mind had found a deep soil in which it could take root and be nourished and grow into a strong and beautiful tree. I failed to understand that this is true love. Had I understood it, I would not have relented to the flutters of passion which I mistook for a higher love. How right you were when you told me that I ought not to starve my mind of all that is beauty and poetry. When I stopped seeing you, I had not a morsel of mental food until the day I came to stay with Lucy. I was so famished! It was my hunger for a fuller life which seduced me. Had I not bowed to Tom's wishes; had I clung to our friendship as I believe now I ought to have, the shallow sweetness of another's admiration would have had no charms for me, because my palate would have been satisfied with the wholesome fare of our conversation.

I know your mind revolves around that thing that pains you, your deformity, and you fear that I pity you rather than love you. Believe me, dear Philip, that pity does no diminish love. I pity you, but not because you are a pitiful creature. I pity you for your deformity because it hurts you and I wish to soften your pain. But I love you for your boundless goodness and your noble mind. Were you straight and tall as a young beech tree, I would love you no more and no less. I told Stephen I meant to marry none but you. I told him I cared for you, though I do not think he believed me.

Will you believe me, dear Philip? Can you believe me? If anyone can it is you. You speak of cruel tongues that would keep us apart, but those are not cruel who would say that I grasped at you as a drowning woman clings to a floating log. They are merely humans thinking human thoughts, and anyone, anyone apart from you would think I was selfishly seeking my own salvation. They would not even be entirely wrong, because I hunger day and night for that love and friendship I once knew with you, so I could never claim to be unselfish when I tell you all this. And yet, I would not write this letter if it were not for your own sake as well. I do not want you to live in resignation and endurance. I would be that light in your life; I would give you that rapture of ever-springing, ever-satisfied want of which you speak. In short, I do not ask you to rescue me, I am telling you that I would be yours if you would have me. If you feel you could not share a life with me; if you feel it would overtax your strength to face up to the world or would alienate you from your father, then think no more about me. But do not renounce me in the false belief that you are sparing me from yourself. Nothing could be dearer to me than your companionship.

You say you would obey me and serve me in any way I ask. I require no such service of you. All I ask is that, if you can, you accept the heart which I offer you as wholly yours.

Maggie


End file.
